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Egyptian police clear protesters out of central Cairo

September 15, 2012 | 5:07
am

CAIRO --Central Cairo had been cleared Saturday of
stone-throwing protesters after several days of clashes with police over a
video that insulted the Muslim prophet Mohammed and fanned riots across the
Islamic world.

Police cleared Cairo’s Tahrir Square in the early
morning after weathering four turbulent days where angry crowds
threatened to burn the U.S. Embassy and were held off with barricades and tear
gas after initial protests Tuesday in which young men scaled the wall of
the site and tore down the American flag.

The spectacle of men standing defiantly on the embassy walls
helped spark a similar demonstration Tuesday in Libya, where U.S.
Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in a militant group’s attack, and later in
the week in Yemen, Sudan and Tunisia, where embassies were overrun by looters,
who torched cars and threw petrol bombs. Friday prayers ignited anti-U.S.
protests in close to 20 countries.

At least 54 people have been detained in connection with the violence in
Cairo, Egypt's state news agency reported Saturday.

The nearly week-long Egyptian protest, first
called for by ultra-conservative Salafists, drew religious Islamists
and ordinary protesters, as well as youth resentful of police.
Many had not even seen the video, but had a palpable resentment
over the lack of opportunity in their society even after a
popular uprising had swept away the three-decade reign of Hosni Mubarak. The
economic desperation and rudderless political direction has proved a
combustible mixture as groups of young men have shown themselves eager to
fight authority.

Saturday afternoon in Tahrir Square provocative signs had been torn
down and more than six police trucks were parked in different locations,
with security officers in civilian clothes waiting inside trucks in
case disturbances occurred. The stench of tear gas lingered on side
streets leading to the U.S. Embassy, causing pedestrians to wince and
cover their mouths.